Warm-ish and damp with possibility of rain… probably just enough that taking down the outdoor decorations will be contra-indicated. Or maybe not. I’m in no hurry to take them down. I love the lights.
I spent the whole of the year so far doing computer maintenance stuff, and not critical stuff at that. So much for making inroads on the list. Having extra kids in the house meant any plumbing work was ill-advised and that is the most pressing issue. Given the extremely late night the kids had, everyone was content to spend the day mostly vegged out, even the dog.
Today though, I’ll have to get started on actual productive stuff. School starts back up tomorrow, and some kids who have been staying up late will be very grumpy. I’ll be harassing them today so they don’t sleep in too long.
I did cancel all my ebay listings that I had any question about where the item was, or if I hadn’t seen it while looking for the missing item. I’ve got to get some new listings up, and I’ve decided to start with higher value things. I usually just do whatever is close to hand and easy to list. I’ve been accumulating stuff that is worth more though and I need to sell it, not stack it. Time to get D1 to start listing the easy and cheap items like calculators, books, and remote controls. New year and a new broom and other mixed metaphors, and all that.
So let’s get to it. We’ve all got stuff to do, and stuff to NOT do. Ready, GO!
n
(stacking should continue)
Bob Graham campaigned on ending safety inspections in Florida when he first ran for Governor in 1978, and the program shut down not long after he took office. Call it 79 or 80.
The emissions inspection boondoggle was part of a Federal mandate which ran briefly in the 90s but only in certain counties.
From what I understand, since we left, a mandatory safety inspection program has returned in a limited form for vehicles purchased out of state or flagged by law enforcement during a traffic stop.
BNSF sabotage is a whole separate can of worms.
The railroad is despised up there for a number of reasons, including several oil train accidents, but the Dem politicians tend to look the other way because it belongs to Warren Buffett and motivates his involvement in getting the pipelines shut down. Plus BNSF runs the heavy commuter rail in Seattle as well as helps make Amtrak kinda-sorta work on the Cascades line, albeit with heavy state subsidies.
Even if the oil doesn’t roll on BNSF tracks, a subsidiary is the only manufacturer of tanker cars in North America.
When we lived up there, I don’t recall a time when I didn’t hear trains running on the major westbound route along the river not far from our house. Coal and wheat out of the Midwest seemed to roll day and night to the ports.
@greg:
In UK, annual safety inspections (which include an emissions check) are mandatory for all vehicles over 3 years old. There is a possible exemption for vehicles classed as “classic” or “vintage”, but that doesn’t even begin to be applicable unless the vehicle was first registered before about 1975 or so. Certainly, at that age a vehicle doesn’t pay an annual fee for registration, which I posted about a day or so ago.
As to “expensive”, the annual MOT inspection fee (laid down by Government) is £54.50 for your average car (with less than 8 seats). And that’s more than I thought it was – I’ve never paid an MOT fee on its own, it’s always been combined with a yearly service. Last one for my SEAT (1.4 litre, 5 seats) was about £200 for service, oils, and MOT, which was a pass – I wouldn’t have been allowed to move the vehicle under its own power if it had failed, until the failure points were fixed. It is permissible (I think) to get a failed vehicle towed elsewhere to be fixed.
There is some corruption, mostly involving shady issuance of MOT certificates, but nearly everyone in UK just puts up with the annual chore.
For those interested, complete details are here.
G.
A state contractor ran the inspection program in Florida at stations managed by the Florida Highway Patrol. Ending the inspections wasn’t out of concern about the potential for corruption as much as good politics.
Bob Graham was a highly regarded state senator, but his opponent in 1978 was Jack Eckerd, as in Eckerd Drugs, a wildly successful businessman who was attempting to become only the second Republican Governor in Florida history.
Graham, a Dem, campaigned on popular issues such as ending inspections and firing up the state’s electric chair after a long period of dormancy. Eckerd had a hot button issue about preventing casino gambling corporate interests from entering Florida and “ruining” the state, which wasn’t overly popular and probably contributed to his loss.
Geesh, times have changed.
@Jenny:
Don‘t let the other person bother you. I have been on the receiving end of disdain in my tenure at the church.
I moved a plant someone had placed up front because it blocked a camera. I was told very rudely that I was to not move any decorations without approval of the decorations committee. How I do this 10 minutes before broadcast starts was only answered with snotty look when I asked.
As media director I thought I could make changes in the media. Once I decided to play lively Christian music before services started rather than funeral level organ playing. I was again put in my place by the organist. She never talked with me but complained through everyone else.
I also decided to change the backgrounds on the screens to photographs rather than a single color. In my role I figured it was my choice. That was met with much bad comments. Not to me, but through others.
I decided to relocate a camera for a better angle. People complained it blocked their view and wanted the camera moved. Of course there were lots of empty seats to which these three people could have moved.
After these incidents I just did what I felt was best for my scope of responsibility. I ignored the criticism as some people just like to complain.
Correction: Florida had several Republican Governors during reconstruction but, once that ended, the party didn’t win the office again until Claude Kirk in 1966, a time span of 90 years.
Yeah, don’t mess with the organist in those places.
The organist’s wife was involved in wedding arrangements where we were originally supposed to get married. I’ve written before about having to fire the church/minister six weeks before the wedding when the extortion started to add up and the minister tried a $400 shakedown for additional counseling.
The organist’s piece of the action was $250 for the hour.
Our goobermint, led by plugsy McSpongeBrain The Last, at it’s finest:
America’s Persecuted Political Prisoners
If anybody should be out on their own recognizance, it is these people. Instead we get “Remember Saint Floyd! These WHITEY people are domestic TERRORISTS!”
My home built desktop system has three SSDs. C: is the Boot drive and has Windows and applications software. D: is the data drive. E: is the archive drive with duplicates of the D: stuff and has music video files. I plan to upgrade D: from 128 GB to 1 TB so I can move the music files to it.
I also have three Seagate iron drives which backup E: and have some really old files. The spinning drives are on switches so they only run when I turn them on. The oldest is a 320 GB; the newest two are 1 TB. My switch panel will accommodate four drives.
The system has an AMD Ryzen 7 5700, 32GB of RAM, MSI ATI RX570 with 8GB. (When I built it with a Ryzen 5 2600 with 8 GB and older video card.) My son has never seen it with the covers on it. I’m often changing something.
I also think that a burglar won’t bother with a open case computer. My previous desktop system is still on a corner of the desk and runs fine but is slower. lol
In response to Ray and JimB: 84 & 12 days.
Indeed. You can’t mess with someone else’s organ so I only mess with my own organ now.
The lady played 15 minutes of what I called “Funeral Music”. Depressing stuff that seemed like random chords. Really soured the mood in my opinion. I thought I would liven up the time before church started. Contemporary Christian music.
The organist came unhinged. That was her job, the time before church was hers and hers alone. That was not to be messed with. I heard about the problem through others. The organist never talked with me, just complained vocally to many others. The church went back to pre-service funeral music.
Seems I was mistaken as there are several people that are older than me. I thought Stu was the only one older.
An unhinged organist? Funeral music? I’ve seen that movie!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6fG3fOLAEI
Svengoolie had it recently, but the film is public domain.
74F and 99%RH with overcast and no actual rain yet.
It would be nice for the rain to hold off.
But I’m not counting on it.
Time for coffee..
n
I’m the director I go to tape to give her a rest before services. Tough noughies. Sorry, pastor, she didn’t say a word to me.
Anyone use QEMU or SheepShaver to run Mac os9? Any preference?
A friend recently disclosed that their billing system is Quicken running on a ca. 1996 Performa 6300CD, and is starting to have trouble.
(No, its not the CIO for Southwest.)
They like it because it is NOT-connectable to the Internet (makes HIPPA compliance easier), but it’s getting hard to find working compatible printers and printer ink…
They plan to close their doors at retirement in a couple of years, so don’t want to change things now, my thought was to run the old stuff in a VM.
Ability to print to a modern printer is needed.
Your best bet might be actual Apple hardware from the late 90s/early 00s, right after Steve Jobs returned and started getting cozy with Intel by first adopting USB.
An original iMac or iBook running OS9 does not have any network capability unless you plug in an Ethernet cable or one of the Apple proprietary WiFi cards, but you still get relatively modern USB device support for a parallel port bridge to a dot matrix printer capable of emulating Epson or generic PostScript laser/inkjet.
Depending on where you live, you might have an old school Apple dealer nearby who could help, but the Apple Stores killed off most of the remaining independents who survived the CompUSA/Apple store-within-a-store concept.
Had a chance to click thru on the list of daynotes sites, and only one links to a currently maintained site that still has the same purpose.
I didn’t dig to find out if the same people still had different sites, and a couple looked like the domain was sold to someone else.
But yeah, longevity. Or not.
n
re: Church musicians
My ex-wife has been the choir director/music director at a Catholic church for years, and in charge of hiring organists and pianists, one of whom was my son.
Unlike many positions in the church, music leadership gets paid. That includes choir directors and keyboard players, and cantors. In other words, positions requiring significant training, initiative, and education. And in many cases, they are underpaid. My son quit his job at the church because of the pay scale; it wasn’t worth his time, and he was only there for the money. Not a believer.
So I can sort-of see the point of an organist being miffed at being “replaced” by recorded music and having her leadership undercut. But then, I’ve never understood that Protestant thing of using recorded music at a service. Or of big media presentations, either. I mean, if you don’t do it live, why not just stay home and watch it on TV? Tune into Joel Olsteen or something.
None of which affects me personally, non-believer that I am.
My choice for church music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulDC1w1ydLI
Why don’t they just update Quicken? Convert the file and run on newer hardware that will support newer printers. Turn off the WiFi on the newer system and there is no connection to the internet.
Why don’t they just update Quicken?
– definitely not always possible, or desirable. We’ve been down that path, and stuff sometimes just doesn’t work.
n
She still got lots of playing time during the service and after the service. It was 15 to 20 minutes before services started that something was required. Something more than sounding like a person was entering a funeral. It was really depressing. She was old, had been playing the organ for 40 years, and no one was going to pry that organ from her hands.
She also had a tendency to control the tempo of songs that were being sung. The music director would try to get her to speed up but she ignored him, played louder, at her pace. One time the church was doing a contemporary song, fairly modern, she acted like she was playing along. All she was doing was moving her hands on the keys without depressing any keys. If she really did not like a song, I have seen her sit with her arms folded glaring at the music director.
She was really living in the past and wanted to remain so, at her comfort level.
The problem with the organ is that someone had built the organ and donated it to the church. A member of her family. There were no audio outputs to send a signal to the sound board. She could play as loud as she wanted, and she really did on songs she liked. It was easy for her to overwhelm the entire audio in the church.
huh, guess we know where the Governor stands on sex trafficking…
n
Rain has started here. Still gentle and slow drizzle but it is getting everything wet.
n
The USVI is a loooong transit for being only 1000 miles on a straight line from Tampa. Head out there, and you’re going for something specific.
Ray Thompson says:
Quicken is now subscription-based; it’s SaaS, not a program that you can buy. And as a long-time Quicken user, that’s introduced LOTS of unresolved bugs. I’m looking for an equivalent program that’s NOT SaaS, but haven’t found one yet.
I regret to inform you all that Tina, Ms. Pecancorner, has passed away.
We exchanged emails and real mail and she dropped off the radar after Thanksgiving without answering my last reply to her.
I’ve been looking for news, and today I found an obituary. She passed on 12/26/2022.
It’s been a bad week. My brother also passed away on the 28th.
She mentioned being ill but in a “no big deal” way. I’ll miss her.
Sorry to hear about your brother.
Yes, I know. I use Quicken. Sort of angered me but a lot of software has gone subscription based. Most notable is Photoshop and Lightroom.
I have not found any bugs in Quicken in the things that I do and most of the bugs resolved in each release seem to do with bill pay and connections to other online accounts.
I was also a MSMoney user and was saddened when that program was discontinued. I was also a beta tester for Quicken in the late ’90s.
Unfortunately, there are not any realistic alternatives that I have found. Mint, forget about it. I don’t want my stuff on someone else’s server. You indicated you only needed it for a couple of years so maybe it is worth paying for the two years.
It’s Fake Spring today. It clouds up and for sure is going to rain. Then it’s sunny. 78F and breezy. Pretty nice weather.
I bought some cheap microfiber towels to clean windows. So far, better than toting a roll of paper towels around. One for first clean, another for streaks. The window in this room? Glass? What glass?
One of the phones is acting wonky. I have not written anything down. Seems to puke when the battery gets to around 55% and it turns off. You can try to turn it back on and nope. Connect the charger and it boots up. I have swapped batteries, I think having three batteries being flaky at the same time is not a thing.
I ran Google’s back-up thing yesterday. And LG’s back-up thing. In the meantime, I’m ordering a replacement from eBay.
Transfer stuff to the new phone and then I’ll try the hard reset.
RIP.
Sometime in the last few months she posted that she was seriously ill, but I think that was a day that the trolls decreased the signal-to-noise ratio being pests so it slipped by unnoticed.
Two long-time friends disclosed serious cancer issues recently. People I know are no longer dying from accidents or doing something stupid to jeopardize their safety/health.
Freefall: True Beauty
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff3900/fc03847.htm
“You can’t expect true beauty from a species that does not have tentacles”.
Oh my.
If you think Furries are bad, realize that tentacle pr0n is a thing with a large following.
I regret to inform you all that Tina, Ms. Pecancorner, has passed away.
We exchanged emails and real mail and she dropped off the radar after Thanksgiving without answering my last reply to her.
I’ve been looking for news, and today I found an obituary. She passed on 12/26/2022.
It’s been a bad week. My brother also passed away on the 28th.
Sad, very sad. Here is Pecancorner’s obituary.
https://www.koxe.com/2022/12/30/tina-howard-65-of-blanket/
Sorry to hear about your brother.
Indeed, very sorry to hear about your brother, may he rest in peace.
And very sorry to hear that Pecancorner has passed. She did announce that she was sick, but it didn’t sound imminent… I’m sad that she wasn’t here for the last few weeks. I always looked forward to reading her comments. May she rest in peace.
nick
RIP
Pecancorner, Tina. I knew from comments she made that she lived somewhere west of Hamilton and I remembered her as I drove back through that town on my way home after Christmas in Dallas. I always enjoyed her comments and I will miss her.
lpdbw, sorry about your brother.
Checking back I find this from MrAtoz on Nov 6, this year. That’s pretty damned quick.
and isn’t she the primary caregiver for her husband?
n
Cancer is what we’ll all die of, if we don’t die of something else first.
RIP. 65 used to be a good lifespan; now, it seems far too early. I’m 72 myself, but only the good die young. I’ll be around for quite a while yet.
@EdH
I’m guessing MacOS 7.5 or 8. Macs of the 6000-series vintage will typically run up to 9.1 Not hard to find on eBay.
Lot’s of other Macs will run those systems and the software. The beloved G3/G4’s start at 8. I’d start keeping an eye on Craigslist, and see if you can find someone local with a hobby interest in vintage Macs.
As for printer, I would look for an HP Laserjet 4M or 5M (M=Macintosh). Those were boat-anchor beasts, and easily capable of page counts over 200,000.
@nick, yes, iirc her husband has significant health issues.
May she rest in peace.
>> The USVI is a loooong transit for being only 1000 miles on a straight line from Tampa. Head out there, and you’re going for something specific.
Which explains why Uncle Joe just spent New Years Eve there…
>> If you think Furries are bad, realize that tentacle pr0n is a thing with a large following.
But yeah, heard about it from a friend.
FIFY
One of the real benefits to me for all the work this site takes (and my wife wonders what there could possibly be other than egoboo) is finding stuff like this… July 5, 2021
My wife’s aunt had died unexpectedly after coming home from a walk. PecanCorner had this to say…
I hope she got her wish.
n
Amen
re: Old Mac.
Thanks for all the suggestions everyone.
In quizzing my friend some more they believe they may actually have a duplicate machine in storage somewhere, along with an old Iomega zip drive. That would sure make things a lot easier, if still functional.
I told them to keep looking, that ancient HDD drive could die any decade now.
@EdH, I’ve got iomega drives in storage, media too…
n
So do I… somewhere…
If I come across them they are going in the bin for the annual “Olly Olly Oxen Free” cleanup week in May.
I really hit that sucker a few years ago. Tires, batteries, and a stack of cpu’s that I should have pillaged for gold edge connectors but didn’t.
Need to clean out another bunch of carp. Past time, as dad used to say, to “throw out the $5 carp so you can keep the $50 carp”.
Stopped at GW today and had 4 nice multi-drawer part storage organizers in my cart for $5 each. New ones are up to $40 or thereabout. Fortunately, I came to my senses and put them back. Better to toss the stuff that I could have organized with them.
The Zip drives died very prematurely due to the infamous “click of death”, and many sold to PC users used the loathsome parallel port interface requiring special drivers.
Mac users typically opted for SCSI since Apple built machines with that interface up until Steve Jobs’ return as “interim” CEO.
re: Pecancorner’s husband
She posted on Daily Pundit that when the cancer returned, she couldn’t care for him any more and was settling him in a nursing home. It sounds like he’ll be in good hands.
And she made it clear that she was comfortable in her faith. She said: “We appreciate your prayers, they are effective. God will heal me here, or He will heal me in Heaven. ” That’s one of the things I envy about believers.
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/01/02/how-many-russian-soldiers-were-killed-in-the-ukrainian-new-years-day-strike-n521050
Russians admit to 63 dead (largest admitted in war so far), but actual number reported as 200-400 after multiple HIMARS missiles struck and detonated munitions stored at a school.
Got one thing done today, invoicing for my remaining client. I’m kinda surprised how big the number is, but then it is for the whole year.
n
Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin in critical condition after making tackle in Monday Night Football game:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/buffalo-bills-safety-damar-hamlin-in-critical-condition-after-collapsing-on-field/ar-AA15UiVx
Why? Because he’s a Republican? Get stuffed.
Investigate him right after the Biden family is found guilty and imprisoned for life. Right after Ilhan Omar, AOC, Maxine Walters, and a host of others, including not a few Republicans, are investigated and jailed for rampant corruption.
Horse is out of the barn, and too little is too late.
n
Top of the DNC talking points memo this week. It even made the Peter King column at NBC Sports.
Meanwhile King is noticeably silent on certain football matters … like the failure of Lovie Smith in Houston after being one of the chorus championing the hire.
Hopefully the firing comes quickly. Yucs fans can tell you what happens when Lovie has a #1 draft pick.
Perfectly normal for very fit young athletes to be falling down dead or with strokes or heart attacks. Happens all the time, always has, so sad, but always will… /sarc
Perfectly normal for young fit people in their 20s to have strokes and Bell’s Palsy, including both halves of a marriage, like the Biebers…/sarc
it is getting to the point where it’s pretty hard to arm wave.
n
The U.S. needs to pass a registration law, then a reciprocity law.
No grandfathering–divestiture after 12 months.
Confiscation of any property with hidden foreign investors.
Sounds like there is enough evidence out there to make a good case that the EUA for mRNA vaccines was based on fraud which included the vaccine manufacturers.
Strip away that protection and let’s see what the market valuation is.
Aaron Rogers winning a final Super Bowl would make the NFL beat reporters heads explode.
Maybe Antonio Brown is available for the stretch.
Illinois supreme court halts end to cash bail
https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2023/01/02/illinois-supreme-court-halts-end-to-cash-bail-n520978
Courts should eliminate cash bail for any crime perpetrated on a legislator or their families, on the grounds that they asked for it.
Above I said:
“Confiscation of any property with hidden foreign investors.”
Should have been foreign “ownership”.
Targeted toward real estate, so yes, some definitions would have to be worked out for corporate assets, but reciprocity would probably take care of most worries, anyway.
And no nonsense about corporate ownership of real estate with said corporation owned by foreign investors more than, say, 10%.
I can do the whole thing in 400 pages and you can trust me and vote on it to find out what’s in it.
“Migrant-Fueled New Year Mayhem Turns Berlin Into Warzone”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/migrant-fueled-new-year-mayhem-turns-berlin-warzone
“German youth in migrant-heavy neighborhoods once again turned Berlin and other German cities into war zones on New Year’s Day, but this year, news reports indicate that attacks were especially brutal and targeted rescue services, including ambulance workers.”
“In Berlin, police and firefighters responded to 3,943 incidents, with 15 firefighters and 18 police officers injured. According to Bild newspaper, there were “particularly bad attacks in the hotspot neighborhoods of Kreuzberg and Neukölln with a high proportion of migrants.””
Oh look, Berlin looks like Paris with immigrant riots.
I wonder when the Berliners will start paying their dhimmi to their immigrants ?
maximum diversity! Enjoy the vibrancy. It’s not like they weren’t warned…
n
–pretty safe to assume this guy had the shots.
n
>> I can do the whole thing in 400 pages and you can trust me and vote on it to find out what’s in it.
Come on now, you’re short pages by a factor of 10 if you want any DC
swindlerthiefCongress-critter to vote on it blind.Why even Stevie Wonder would laugh.